High-Rise

As the leaders of the top-floor clan—the last surviving tribe in the building—Pangbourne and Royal make a number of women their servants. These women include their wives as well as Jane Sheridan and Helen Wilder—whom Royal rescues from the lower floors as a potentially valuable hostage, should Wilder ever reach his penthouse.

Royal and Pangbourne find they’ve made a strategic error in assuming there would always be rival clans below them to manipulate; the breakdown of the clan structure forces Royal and Pangbourne into the new free-for-all over sex, food, and security with the other residents.

As he has for the past three weeks, Royal orders the women to set the formal dining table for his dinner with Pangbourne. The women light candles, lay silverware, and prepare an elaborate meal of roast meat. This charade of civility—outside the candlelight the apartment is littered with trash—amuses Royal. Neither he nor the other tenants throw their garbage over the side of the building out of a sense of ownership, a need to “surround themselves with the mucilage of unfinished meals, bloody bandage scraps, broken bottles that once held the wine that made them drunk, all faintly visible through the semi-opaque plastic” (159).

Helen informs Royal that Pangbourne will no longer come for dinner.